DOI issue:
No. 61 (April, 1898)
DOI article:Modern domestic architecture: the work of Mr. Ernest Newton, [1]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18391#0194
The IVork of Ernest Newton
BULLERS WOOD ERNEST NEWTON, ARCHITECT
thousand and one conflicting items that make up yet remember their exterior appearance. It is not
the house. Most of us, when we feel tempted to given to every one to play blindfold chess, or to
design a castle in the air, devote our energies to solve abstruse mathematical problems mentally ;
one detail only, and leave the rest vague. Are but a few are so gifted, and those who are not are
we infected by a taste for the picturesque ? we most wise if they acknowledge first the rarity of
evolve delightful garden fronts or main elevations, such faculties, and next the value of the lucky
Are wre bitten by sanitation ? the whole building individuals who possess them.
is but an adjunct to certain schemes for ventila- It has been wrell said that the champions of any
tion, drainage, and the like. Are wre painters ? it new style, if it be really an addition to the art of
is a studio with supplementary rooms. If bookish, the world, must accept the charge of plagiarism
it is a library, with living-apartments left vague, lightly. Since Wagner revolutionised opera, all
and so on. But the house, fully equipped and composers who have allowed themselves to be
a working possibility, is only imagined by a few influenced by his effects have been accused of
experts whose knowledge is not over-weighted cribbing. Yet his contemporaries were not accused
by precedent, but soars lightly on the wings of of stealing from Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven ; the
fantasy. It may be that you who read, or I who mastery of these composers had been established
write, have this faculty, but the odds are im- long enough for a world to recognise that certain
measurably against it. We all build chateaux en of their phrases and orchestral effects had passed
Espagne as unsubstantial as the glories of panto- into the vocabulary of music. So in the Gothic
mime; very few have the power to face the most revival, as in the Classic, adherence to precedent,
ordinary conditions to make a good drawing-room nay, barefaced imitation of previous works, was
without losing sight of the dustbin meanwhile, or to held to be not merely venial but praiseworthy,
arrange a series of rooms comfortably placed, and To-day, if a painter affects the manner of Velas-
i 72
BULLERS WOOD ERNEST NEWTON, ARCHITECT
thousand and one conflicting items that make up yet remember their exterior appearance. It is not
the house. Most of us, when we feel tempted to given to every one to play blindfold chess, or to
design a castle in the air, devote our energies to solve abstruse mathematical problems mentally ;
one detail only, and leave the rest vague. Are but a few are so gifted, and those who are not are
we infected by a taste for the picturesque ? we most wise if they acknowledge first the rarity of
evolve delightful garden fronts or main elevations, such faculties, and next the value of the lucky
Are wre bitten by sanitation ? the whole building individuals who possess them.
is but an adjunct to certain schemes for ventila- It has been wrell said that the champions of any
tion, drainage, and the like. Are wre painters ? it new style, if it be really an addition to the art of
is a studio with supplementary rooms. If bookish, the world, must accept the charge of plagiarism
it is a library, with living-apartments left vague, lightly. Since Wagner revolutionised opera, all
and so on. But the house, fully equipped and composers who have allowed themselves to be
a working possibility, is only imagined by a few influenced by his effects have been accused of
experts whose knowledge is not over-weighted cribbing. Yet his contemporaries were not accused
by precedent, but soars lightly on the wings of of stealing from Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven ; the
fantasy. It may be that you who read, or I who mastery of these composers had been established
write, have this faculty, but the odds are im- long enough for a world to recognise that certain
measurably against it. We all build chateaux en of their phrases and orchestral effects had passed
Espagne as unsubstantial as the glories of panto- into the vocabulary of music. So in the Gothic
mime; very few have the power to face the most revival, as in the Classic, adherence to precedent,
ordinary conditions to make a good drawing-room nay, barefaced imitation of previous works, was
without losing sight of the dustbin meanwhile, or to held to be not merely venial but praiseworthy,
arrange a series of rooms comfortably placed, and To-day, if a painter affects the manner of Velas-
i 72